My hard drive used to work normally, but it has recently started developing more bad sectors. Performance was already worse when using this drive compared with my 1 TB Windows drive. Is there anything I can do to slow down or repair the problem, or should I consider the drive unrecoverable? I know hard drives are relatively inexpensive, but I cannot replace it immediately and I am worried about buying another drive that might already be faulty. I have heard there may be tools that can manage or prevent bad sectors, but I am not sure what is safe to use.
4 Answers
You can scan the disk with tools such as badblocks, but a scan is mainly useful for confirming the condition or identifying data that may be at risk. Some people work around damaged areas by shrinking or repartitioning the drive, but that is only a short-term gamble and can make the usable capacity much smaller. Do not use the drive for backups or anything you cannot replace.
If you buy used, look for a seller or recycler that provides the drive's health data and accepts returns. Check the SMART report, especially reallocated sectors, pending sectors, and uncorrectable sectors. A drive with any of those values increasing should be rejected. A cheap used disk can be reasonable for temporary, disposable storage, but it should never be your only copy of important files.
The most important step is making a second copy of your files before running stressful tests. Copy the irreplaceable data first, preferably to another disk or online storage. After that, check the drive's SMART status and plan to retire it. Bad sectors cannot be reliably stopped by formatting or a repair utility; those tools may only hide the symptoms temporarily.
Back up anything important immediately and stop treating this drive as reliable storage. Drives remap weak sectors internally using reserved space, so if the operating system is already reporting bad sectors, the drive has likely been deteriorating for some time. There is no software that can repair the underlying hardware, and increasing errors often lead to total failure. You can keep it temporarily for nonessential use if absolutely necessary, but replacing it is the safe solution.
Thanks. I am glad the system showed me the bad sectors. If this had been my Windows drive, I could have lost much more.
Buying locally might be an option, although I am new to the city and do not know where the computer recyclers are. I will look for reputable sellers and make sure there is a return policy.